As you plant, so shall you reap

It seems that the Ohio resident who asked John McCain at a town hall meeting about the loss of Ohio jobs due to the pending closure of a cargo airport was in fact one of the organizers of the event. (See comments 6 and 7.)

Republican use of “ringers” impersonating ordinary citizens at town hall meetings is nothing new. What’s bizarre here is that McCain then brought the ringer out again to complain (slightly incoherently) about his opponent’s reaction. And what’s at least equally bizarre is that McCain doesn’t seem to have been prepared to answer the question the ringer asked.

So it seems likely that Houghtaling was trying to help the campaign but her question hadn’t been arranged in advance. She didn’t know that McCain had helped push the deal through, or that Davis had been the lobbyist for the deal, and that the question was a hot potato for McCain.

This is technically known as “sloppy advance work,” or “getting what you had coming to you.”